True lies: Are employers and employees ‘dishonest’ with each other in not so obvious ways?

I s the relationship between an employer and an employee one based on “dishonesty”? Yes, says LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman in his book The Alliance. Hoffman whose professional networking website helps recruiters and job seekers connect makes the explosive claim that employers and employees are constantly “lying” to each other not always overtly, but in a subtler way.

This happens in the way we frame our behaviour and expectations towards each other, the realities we choose to tacitly leave unacknowledged. While his observations might apply more to large-scale corporations rather than smaller enterprises or start-ups, you might want to go through the “lies” that Hoffman has outlined in his book and figure out if you’ve come across any of these deceptive perceptions:

“we are family”
Hoffman says that one of the biggest “lies” employers tell their employees is that they are like family. As an example of just how untrue that tenet is, Hoffman asks simply, “Do we fire our children for getting bad grades?” Now this does not preclude the possibility of very real friendships, affection and mutual respect springing up between bosses and their teams. Hoffman does not deny that employers and employees do become close. However, he points out that the existence of genuine affection should not make employees lose sight of the fact their presence in a firm is dependent on performance or on meeting certain criteria/ expectations that the employer has.

“i’ll be here till the end”
Most employees (or prospective recruits) rarely acknowledge what is actually true: That the job they’re currently in is very unlikely to be their last. But the spoken/unspoken impression most employees try to give their employers is that they’d like to see out the rest of their careers in that organisation. The truth, Hoffman says, is that an employee’s loyalty lasts only as long as his/her self-interest is served in sticking with the organisation. Too harsh an assessment? Not really, feels Hoffman, pointing out that career progression for most professionals today does involve changing companies to leverage better pay and roles, faster.

So, why do we lie?
Hoffman theorises that the two greatest “lies” the employer and employee engage in, is because each wants to tell the other what they feel he/she wants to hear. So when an employer sends out the message “We’re family” what he/she is doing is gaining the employee’s loyalty by telling them they’re valued. On the other hand, the employee knows that his/her employer values loyalty, so they say/do what they must to make it evident that their allegiances lie with the organisation. Hoffman hastens to add that in many cases, people actually believe that the messages they are sending are true — they delude themselves just as much as they are deceiving the other party.

How can we be more honest?
Hoffman says that whenever a potential candidate is being hired for a job at LinkedIn, the managers/recruiters make it a point to ask what job he/she would like to take up once they move on from the company. While it throws most candidates a little off balance, Hoffman says the question is a reflection of his organisation’s philosophy, that a job there is meant to have a transformative effect on a person’s career: It has to help them achieve their goals and help them in their next role. He also proposes that both employers and employees learn to think of jobs not as “lifelong contracts” but as a “tour of duty” — an engagement that is meant to last for a particular period of time during which both the employer and employee meet specific goals/ends. Honesty, in this case, is the best policy.